‘GLAD HE’S FINALLY COMING HOME’

The Story of an American Hero

Early on the morning of Dec. 8, 1941, nine Japanese fighter planes swooped down on Malalag Bay in the Philippines and strafed and sunk two U.S. Navy seaplanes at the very outset of World War II.  All of the Americans escaped unharmed except Ensign Robert G. Tills, 23, of Manitowoc, Wisconsin, who was cut down by machine gun bullets. “Ensign Robert Tills died in the fusillade of bullets from the Japanese strafers, the first American naval officer killed in the defense of the Philippines,” the Naval Historical Center wrote. Continue reading…

Christmas Cards for the Troops – By Heritage Makers

Remembering Our Troops this Christmas

Last Saturday while watching the Mike Huckabee Show on Fox News, Mike Huckabee’s wife did a short segment on sending Christmas Cards to the men and woman in the Armed Services.  The Red Cross would like to send out 1 million cards to our troops this Christmas, so I decided that I would send 100 Christmas cards to the troops who are protecting us overseas. Many Service Members don’t get anything from home at all, I found that so sad. The website Mrs. Huckabee promoted was The American Red Cross Holiday Mail  – please remember that your cards must be postmarked by December 10th or they will be returned to you. Checkout the website and read up about the other rules for sending Christmas cards to the troops this year. This is one of the cards I am sending out, I found the design in our Template Gallery and it took me a minute to drop a photo in and add a few Christmas wishes, a small price to pay for the freedom they make possible for all of us. Send one card; it will make all the difference.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW MY CHRISTMAS CARD TO THE TROOPS

Who Are You?

When my mother died I flew home to help take care of the funeral and her meager earthly belongings. Of most interest to me were the boxes and albums of photos, mostly black and white photos. These photos represented the lives of my parents, their families and their life stories. I know they treasured these photos and the memories associated with them. I am sure they invoked many stories about the people in the photos. Stories that probably began with ” do you remember when……”

Unfortunately, for me the majority of the people in the photos are unknown strangers. When I look at the photos I see a book that can’t be opened and read, I see stories that will never be told about people I will never know and places that will always be just a background.

So my heritage lies in boxes of photos and I have become the detective in pursuit of the details before the stories can be told.

Sometimes, I have found myself asking these unknown faces in a photo “Who are you?”, in hopefull anticipation that somewhere, somehow I may know.

Until then I will keep wondering “Who are you?”.

Are we going to leave a bunch of jpegs of unknown faces for our children to ask “Who are you?

—Nev

FYI – The picture was taking during Word War II, somewhere in Rhodesia, Africa – thats all I know!